be flow.

Mountain bikers talk a lot about “flow”: achieving it, losing it, fighting to get it back again. Because finding flow on your mountain bike means riding smoothly over and around rocks and roots and other obstacles: essentially, riding with the trail’s features, not against them. And smooth = fast. And fast is fun, and can win you races.

But I just learned that flow is also a concept in psychology. Apparently, it is “the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by complete absorption in what one does.” How perfect is that for any athlete?